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Diamond All Form
This form documents all items offered by Diamond to the retailer over the last several months/years as seen in the Previews catalog each month. These fields will match closely with the fields in the Previews on Windows program.
Noteworthy fields
- Cancelled?- which should be checked by the user when Diamond notes that an item has been cancelled on the retailers invoice. This will traverse the orders placed by customers and remove them, placing them in their 'Pull Archives' tab with a 'DC' (Diamond Cancelled) code in the 'Filled/Cancelled' field. They will also be credited the amount which they paid, if the item was already paid for.
- Pg# - makes for a quick lookup of the item when looking in the Previews catalog
- 'Price' vs. 'SRP' - 'Price' will often contain a price which is applicable to a retailer, but is not intended to be sold as such to the customer (e.g. COMIC SHOP LOCATOR SERVICE - contains a 'Price' with an 'SRP' of zero). 'Price' is the retailers' price which the 'Discount Code' is based on. 'SRP' is what the customer is generally charged. If a retailer wants to change the 'SRP' for the store, it should be changed here. Then all future orders will refer to the new 'SRP'.
- Qty Ordered/Qty Received/Qty Sold - Though the CBPF is not intended to be an extensive inventory system it does track the total number of initially ordered items. This field can be manually changed when items are reordered so that the total can be maintained. 'Qty Received' will be a running total of the invoice quantities received. 'Qty Sold' contains items which were ordered by customers. This field can be used to keep a running total as items are sold, or the weekly/monthly inventory numbers can be placed in this field to assist in ordering.
Sort Buttons 
These buttons change the order of the items listed in this form. Though custom ordering is available through the menu bar, these buttons will probably suffice most of the time. (R) stands for reverse order. Precedence is usually given to the most recent items offered which is why many fields are reversed in order so the most recent will be at the top of the ordering. There are subtle differences in the ordering and the correct sort order will allow the user to find an item quicker.
- Previews Date(R)/Code
- Most recent catalog first, in the same order listed in the catalog. Useful when looking at a specific Previews catalog or order form.
- Previews Date(R)/Description/Issue(R)
- Most recent catalog first, alphabetized by description with largest issue number first. Useful when wanting to find all Star Wars items in the most recent catalog (as long as Star Wars is at the beginning of the Item Description field).
- Description/Issue(R)/Previews Date(R)
- Alphabetized by description with largest issue number first, then most recent catalog.
- Description/Previews Date(R)/Issue(R)
- Alphabetized by description with the most recent catalog first, then the largest issue number first. Will place newer issues above older issues of a title which has been restarted, with an identical title as the previous volume (without a volume added to the description).
Filter Fields
(see picture above)If you fill in the information in one or more fields and press the ReQuery button, the Diamond All form will limit the data displayed based on the data you have requested. This has always been available with filter buttons on the toolbar. However, this should significantly simplify and speed up the process. For example, if you want to view the July 2006 Previews only, you would enter 200607 in the First BatchNo and Last BatchNo fields and press ReQuery. If you wanted to see all issue 1’s in the July 2006 Previews you would enter 200607 in the First and Last BatchNo fields and 1 in the Issue field, then press ReQuery. All of your hot-keys are still available on the Item Code field after a ReQuery. There are First Received Date and Last Received Date fields. If you enter a date in the First Rcv Date field and not in the Last Rcv Date, you will see all items which you have received from the specified date to the current date. If you enter a First and a Last Rcv Date, you will see all items between the two dates. This would speed up finding items which you are recording cycle sheet data for, if you record the data on specified weekly increments from when you receive them (e.g. 1 week, 3 weeks).
The First and Last BatchNo fields will accept batch numbers in any of the following formats for July 2006. 200607, 076, or Jul06 (this last format matches the first 5 characters of an item code in the Diamond All form). The First BatchNo field will also accept a complete 9 character Item Code.
There is a drop-down box to specify a specific vender. Since this list is long, it is much faster to click the drop-down arrow (which highlights the field) and begin typing the vender name until it matches (or comes close), then use up/down arrows on the keyboard to move to nearby vender names. When your selection is highlighted, press tab, enter, or click on another field.
There is also a drop-down box which lets you save queries and quickly specify a saved query to use. If you want to save a query, fill in the selections on the Diamond All form, press the ReQuery button, then select ‘(save/modify/delete filter)’, then type a name in the ‘Save current Diamond All filter as’ field, then press the ‘Save Current Diamond All Filter’ button. If you close and reopen the ‘(save/modify/delete filter)’ form, you can see the query which you saved, with the name which you specified. At this point, you can manually change the query, however, this is very picky that the wording be exactly correct otherwise an error will occur when you try to use the query. If you have any tech-heads working at your store or who are customers, the query is a language known as SQL and they may be able to assist in modifying a query to do what you want. This is a very flexible language if you know what you are doing. Several predefined queries are provided for you to use, modify and learn from.
The checkboxes (e.g. Ordered Items) are tri-state check boxes. This means that if you check the Ordered Items box, you are requesting in this case to see only items which you have ordered. If you uncheck it, then you will see only items which you didn’t order. If you unselect the box (grayed) then you will see items irregardless of whether you ordered them or not. With these check boxes, you can easily view items which you ordered, but have not yet received for a specified month. You must be careful to specify items which are possible. For example, an impossibility would be to view one-shots and mini-series. The query doesn’t show both, it shows items which meet all criteria. No items are both one-shots (max issue = 1) and mini-series (max issue >1). If someone has a specific query request, let me know and I may be able to build a query for you to copy and paste into your predefined queries.
The Previews Description field will search the descriptions contained in the Previews catalog (NOT the 'Item Description' field). The records which match will then be displayed in the 'Diamond All' form. If you use the CTRL-D hot-key to display the Previews Description for a record, you will be able to see what text matched your input.
The Previews Description displays names as first name then last name. So if I want to search for all comics which are written by Bendis, I can specify Bendis as my search. If I specify Moore, I will have results which include Clayburn Moore, Alan Moore and Stuart Moore. But specifying Alan Moore will only have results of Alan Moore, not Stuart, nor Clayburn.
Warning, depending on how many records you specify in the search, this process could take a few minutes to complete.
The sort buttons (custom or toolbar) can then be used to sort the results in different ways. Ordering from this screen works as specified below in the Hot-Keys section.